Between Yesterday and Tomorrow

My grandkids love to run around our house, inside and out, with the flashlights I keep strategically located in case of emergency. This means of course that each time there’s a blackout, and there have been several the past few years, the flashlights are never where I left them. Or else the batteries are dead. Maybe it’s better that way. It connects me with the world outside of Shorewood.

I’ve read there are only one or two hours of electricity a day in Baghdad. That makes me even more aware of all the things I can’t do when we have NO electricity for one or two hours, or seven. Last week Wednesday from about 5:30 PM to 1:30 AM, I couldn’t use the computer, listen to NPR, watch Amy Goodman on Channel 14, finish reading Snow Flower and the Secret Fan for book club, nor even boil water on our gas stove.

Adolph and I ate cereal with raisins, bananas, and milk for supper, then decided to take a walk, a tradition with us during blackouts. We went outside, it was raining, and we came back in. I was thankful we were kept in by water and not by improvised explosive devices, trigger-happy soldiers, and suicide bombers.

I’m scrubbing; I want to get a spot out of a shirt I like. What difference does a spot make? It doesn’t matter, does it? My friend Eva is dying, and spots aren’t life and death issues. Unless they’re on the lungs. That was Eva’s downfall, a ten centimeter spot. I checked my yardstick after her son mentioned the size.

I’m planting seeds, Chinese greens, dropping miniscule orbs into a lumpy furrow, in the hope of a meal two months down the line. And it seems strange: I’m trying to create new life while one of my closest friends is dying. That’s all I’m thinking about. She’s 69. I just turned 70; no one expects her to get there. I’ll probably be around for the greens, if they grow, though of course I can’t be sure.

Bits of her wisdom frequently pop into my mind. “Put it on the back burner for awhile, then take another look.” It’s like the New York Times crossword. The answers you don’t know at first glance are suddenly there the next time you look; your mind’s been working surreptitiously.
“Behind every face, there’s a tragedy.” People are great deniers, but in the end we’re all mere humans, traveling a difficult road.

When I received Eva’s Email in June, I allowed myself a day or two to digest the information, contemplated our 52 years of close contact, often on a daily basis, so close she read my personal journals. Then I called her.
“You’ve been on my list of people to tell, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, as you can well understand,” she said.
“I want you to know what a difference you’ve made in my life. You represent a turning point. My parents tended to look at people from the outside, you looked at them from the inside.”
“Someone else said that to me recently, but I can’t remember who, maybe it was Jim.”
“I’m sure you’ve affected a lot of people that way.”
Eva, Jim, and I were in the same dorm freshman year at Oberlin in 1955. They fell in love, but each married someone else.

She told me she sleeps all the time, that day and night are the same. And I soon learned the significance of that. When I called her a week later, I woke her up, and she didn’t have the energy to talk. And now, she’s always asleep, and Jim answers.

So that’s it. I’m thankful she was in my life for over half a century. She was beautiful, brilliant, observant, insightful, and cared about others, and about the world. It was she who convinced me to go online so we could Email back and forth, and we did, thousands of Emails. She critiqued my work, and I critiqued hers. And she was my lifesaver in times of crisis. I wish I could be her lifesaver now.

Do you ever ask yourself whether or not you really want whatever it is you think you want? Whether that “whatever” will make you more content? I believe the world would be a better place if people asked themselves that question on a regular basis. Maybe I'll begin a series of blogs with it. It's one I'm always asking myself, even for small things.

Last Tuesday the weather report made me wonder whether or not I secretly hoped it would rain so I wouldn't have to sit at my Grass Roots table at National Night Out. Over the past several weeks, I had lined up a half dozen people to keep me company, Linda C had promised a bouquet to brighten the table, Kate T was bringing her PESTICIDE FREE signs, Tom C had supplied me with booklets on creating rain gardens and flyers about rain barrels and disconnecting downspouts, Carol C had told me where to order native plant catalogues, I had flyers about pesticide risks, about 2-4 D, about alternate lawn care, I'd bought 100 hangers for people to leave on the doorknobs of neighbors who don't know that their pesticides sicken and kill more than pestiferous weeds.

And then our daughter mentioned that Tuesday was the best night for our families to have dinner together since all eight of our grandkids were in town. I had to say no, it's National Night Out.

But I'm doing this for our grandkids, and everyone else's. Even for the lawn pesticide sprayers, who are twice as likely to get Parkinson's disease, thanks to their hatred of dandelions. Even for all those dog owners whose pets will develop fast-growing tumors. So I didn't want it to rain. Educating people about the risks is one way I can at least make a dent in a practice that's dangerous to humans, pets, and wildlife, and makes sense only for lawn care and chemical companies.

And it didn't rain. We set up the table with my purple leafy tablecloth, my Grass Roots sign (Let's keep our roots non-toxic) with my paintings of the lake (Let's keep our lake non-toxic), Linda's wild bouquet, Kate's bright yellow signs, flowery brochures, door-hangers, and a sign-up sheet. And more people came than any other year, young and old, friends and strangers, children attracted by the child's drawing on Kate's sign. They took every rain-garden pamphlet, almost a dozen pesticide-free signs, about 15 native plant catalogues, lots of flyers and brochures. Why this sudden surge of interest?

Part of it was perhaps due to the grant Shorewood received last year to disconnect downspouts, supply rain barrels, and install rain gardens in the northeast quarter of the village. I suspect much was due to global warming. Environmentalists have been warning about warming for years while corporations have been trying to convince everyone it doesn't exist. Now it's so blatant it's hard to deny. People might realize that if global warming is true, maybe other equally flimsy bills of goods are being sold to consumers, maybe these chemicals aren't as safe as corporate web sites want us to believe. Cecelia, who sat at the table with me, said she's noticed that there are less treated lawns when she walks to work at UWM. I was excited about Shorewoods’ enthusiasm for dealing with this issue. And about the event itself, the friendliness, the feeling of community.

A little later that evening my New York daughter-in-law brought their dog, Fifi, over to stay with us, and I took her (Fifi, that is) for a walk. What lawns were treated, what lawns weren't, where were the tell-tale weeds? It seemed impossible to find a safe route for Fifi. Even with the soot, the exhaust, the traffic, she's safer in New York City!

If you didn’t take the Lorrie Otto Bus Tour on Saturday, and even if you did, I hope you’ll take my Grass Roots Tour at National Night Out tomorrow, Tuesday, August 7, 4:30 to 7:30, on the west side of Atwater School. You don’t need a bus, for it’s an 8-foot tour of an 8-foot table and features information on some of the many ways to pass up those lawn pesticides that pollute our land, lake, and lungs.

Stops on the tour include pesticide-free yard signs, native plant catalogues, flyers about rain gardens, rain barrels, and alternative lawn care, risk lists for specific pesticides, door-hangers for neighbors who don’t realize their chemicals are killing your dog, a sign-up sheet for Grass Root Emails, and even some Grass Rooters, happy to chat. If you can’t take the tour, stop by the Grass Roots web site, which has a lot of information and links, including a contact form if you wish to be on that Email list.

One way to avoid lawn pesticides is to have a wildflower garden:

Hi Suzanne,
The best possible thing that anyone can do for Lake Michigan and the local environment is to make a wildflower garden. On Saturday August 4th, the 29th Lorrie Otto Bus Tour of Wildflower Gardens leaves the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center at 8.30am and returns at 12.30am. It is a transcendental experience to see these lush, blooming mini Edens.
The Schlitz Audubon telephone number is (414)352 2880.
If you are a member of Wild Ones or of the Schlitz Audubon, the tour costs $18 per person. If not it will cost $22 per person.

When lawns are withered and unsightly, native plants are in full bloom - a riot of color and life.
Please would you pass this information on to your blog readers and others. Thanks.
Ney